In the early years of the 19th
century, ultra-fashionable men known as "dandies" spared no expense in care and
attention to their dress. They also shared a fashion silhouette with contemporary women,
and adopted similar fabrics and fashion details.

The male and female plates from Costume Parisien of 1825 illustrate this point.
The mans cutaway tailcoat, with its squared-off high waistline, related to
womens styles shown in the other volume from the same year. Mens sleeves, like
those for ladies, were cut full and puffy at the shoulders, and shoulders sloped downward
from the neck. The delicacy of the mans pinstriped trousers, bright buttons,
lavishly curled hair, shoes with little bows, and snowy high cravat matched the overall
effect of the female toilette. Men and women shared the same faces and poses.

The 1823 dandy featured in Costume Parisien presented a slightly different
example of this peacock mode for men. His elegant evening attire consisted of elaborately
curled hair, skin-tight pantaloons over hose, two layers of waistcoat, including one in
vivid red, and a velvet cloak trimmed with fur and silver chain.

Dandyism never widely popular, was a doomed phenomenon. By the 1840s a dramatic
change had occured in men's fashion, as men in France, England and the United States[put
on the black suit as their uniform. Fashion historians have come to call this
change "the great masculine renunciation." Black, which began as the color for
ecclesiastical garments, extended to clerks and financial men, and then spread throughout
male society to become the favored color for all urban gentlemen, respectable
professionals, shop clerks, and even artists and writers. Men wore dark shades day and
night. The large 1886 Parisian fashion plate from Les Modes FrançaisesJournal
des Tailleurs shows how sober and serious male costume had become. Tailors offered
fabrics in black or dark tweeds for suits and overcoats and the lines of the clothing were
simple and stark. Pants could be checked or striped but fabric tones were subdued. Hats
with unadorned lines completed a picture of business-like sobriety and no-nonsense
severity.

According to fashion historian Anne Hollander, the clean lines and ease of wearing of
the male suit made it an example of "modern" fashion art. She contrasts the
advanced nature of menswear with the fantasy and backwardness of womens clothing of
the time, still mired in the constrictions of ruffles, swags, corseting, bustles, and
lace. To compare, see Parisian womens garments from the Magasin des Demoiselles
of 1880.